Germany insists UN peacekeeping mission should be deployed across Donbass

Date of publication: 04 01 2018, 12:17

A UN mission should be deployed in the areas of eastern Ukraine gripped by the conflict, not just along the contact line to protect observers of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM), visiting German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in Kiev on Wednesday.

“It is necessary that a UN armed and powerful mission can be deployed across the entire territory [of Donbass], but not merely for protection of a small group of OSCE mission and along the contact line as a new border of Ukraine,” Gabriel told a joint news conference with Ukrainian counterpart Pavel Klimkin.

Germany’s top diplomat promised that his country would promote this idea at the UN Security Council.

“We alongside our French counterparts and members of the UN Security Council will try to introduce a UN real peacekeeping mission to Donbass,” Gabriel underscored.

“A lasting ceasefire and withdrawal of heavy weapons” are mandatory conditions for the UN mission’s deployment to Donbass, he added.

Addressing an annual news conference on December 14, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that Moscow had no objections against international control in Donbass but it should be agreed directly between Kiev and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR). He recalled that Russia has submitted to the UN Security Council a draft resolution on the deployment of UN forces in Donbass to protect monitors of the OSCE mission.